The Forgotten Prince

Chapter III: Dead Ponyville

A loud dull sound was heard. A mist of absolute disorientation and torpidity took over the rainbow-haired pegasus. She felt like everything was fading away from her, for she could not move a single muscle, nor even feel the surface where her numb body had landed.

Her vision was blinded for a few seconds, then changing to blurriness, and all she could hear were muffled and vague background noises. A keen pain was piercing continuously through her head, and she often felt like she was about to lose her consciousness. Yet, with great effort, she was managing to keep her eyelids open.

She was lying still on the ground, facing the black sky, absent of both celestial bodies, occasionally lit up by an immense blood-red flash for a split second, fading away immediately into more darkness. Indistinct shadows passed before her blurred sight at great speed, accompanied by several rapid shots of light that pierced through the skies from all directions.

At some point, between all the tumult and with a dizzy hearing, she was able to hear a familiar voice calling her name nearby. It called again, appearing to be getting closer, for it was louder and clearer the second time.

“Rainbow Dash!” shouted the orange farmer pony, while running to her fallen friend. She looked quite hurt herself, with several bruises and cuts all over her body, almost like she had been caught too close to an explosion, but she was still able to scamper incredibly fast.

She skidded the last few meters away from the cyan pegasus, stopping right to her side, and held her head up from the ground on her front hooves.

“Dash! Dash, can you hear me? Please don’t be dead!”

All that came out of her mouth were low, inarticulate mutters, since she was not able to move her jaw in order to talk clearly, but that was all that Applejack needed to be sure that her friend was still alive, so she sighed in great relief.

“C’mon, RD! We can’t stay here, those things are still falling from the sky!”

That said, she promptly lifted Rainbow Dash up and laid her body carefully on her own back, allowing her to carry the injured Pegasus around. After checking if her friend was well secured, she started running as hastily as she could while carrying the weight of a grown up pony’s numb body, evading a couple of lightning strikes that clashed with the ground perilously close to her.

Rainbow Dash felt a chilly gust of wind hit her face from the haste Applejack was scampering. The blurriness was starting to fade away slowly and her hearing was becoming clearer, allowing her to become aware of the tumultuous, dreadful situation that had settled all around them: frightened screams and powerful blasts, ear-splitting thunders and the sound of lightning bolts clashing violently with the paved streets, and the incessant howling of the wind utterly filled the atmosphere.

She lifted her head leisurely, looking just above Applejack’s stirring mane, only to gaze upon a total war happening right before her eyes: numerous guards scattering around the streets and flying around the skies restlessly, trying to evacuate the citizens from their houses while fighting, unsuccessfully, the shadowy figures that were generated with each bolt of lightning that met the ground.

The unicorn classes were continuously shooting at the strange entities with spheres of light that came out of their horns, but only proving their efforts to be completely worthless, since the shots would just go through their tall, slender bodies, like they were made of black, dense smoke. The desperate and scared guards would eventually find themselves forced to run away from them, while they just kept walking in their direction, slowly and menacingly.

“There’s too many of them!” Rainbow Dash heard one unicorn soldier yell nervously to his commander, while beginning to back down “Our magic is useless against them, sir!”

“Forget about them!” ordered the superior in response, as he turned around and started running away from the figure as well “Let’s hurry and evacuate all the remaining citizens!”

A few houses in front, she witnessed one guard falling out of a window, followed by another mangled female pony she was not able to recognise. Her eyes, tongue and teeth had also been cut off, but this one had even one of the front legs hewn, revealing a bloody bone sticking out of the leg stub. She landed right on top of the guard with a thud and grappled his neck with her only front hoof left.

“I’M SO AFRAID! WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME?!” she screeched demonically at him, as thick blood strings dripped from her mouth and onto his face.

What Rainbow Dash saw next made her want to vomit, as the mutilated pony began stabbing furiously the fallen guard’s stomach, neck and eyes with the splintered bone of her severed leg. The doomed soldier screamed in excruciating pain, while the attacker kept shrieking and wounding him mortally.

Another thunder was heard, followed by the distant cry of a pegasi class soldier high up above, who had been hit by the lightning strike and lost control of his flight. He landed with a big dull sound a few scarce meters in front of Applejack, who had to slow down a bit in order not to get crushed by his body. The impact on the cold, hard paving killed him instantaneously.

Rainbow Dash could barely recognise Ponyville as she had always known it. Though she still could not conjure words very well, her mind inquired herself with a deeply saddened question.

“How did it come to this?”

The answer was revealed to her while anesthetised and unmoving, as flashbacks progressively formed in her mind, still clouded by the force of whatever blow had struck her.

“B-Berry Punch?” Pinkie squealed pleadingly.

She did not seem to listen; instead, she rapidly dashed forward and rose up on her hind legs, preparing to attack them with her front, sore hooves, already high up in the air.

Suddenly, just as she was about to land down her hooves on them, a loud blast was heard, and everything went white, blinding them briefly. It had been a shot of light that hit the window of the room they were in, shattering the glass into pieces.

That was the perfect distraction for Twilight and her friends to escape the house; since they were just one floor above the ground, they simply ran past their staggered assailant and jumped down through the large hole opened on the wall.

Once back on the street, they immediately noticed more ghostly entities approaching them from the distance. Their faceless heads were all turned to them, like they knew they would exit through that door at that precise moment. As they got closer, the horrible sound of static noise, moribund breath and demonic whispers became audible again, coming from within their ethereal bodies.

However, before they got too close, a platoon of unicorn class soldiers that had been deployed on the town square appeared from one side of the street, and hurriedly set a formation in front of the six friends, while conjuring up rapid magic shots of light to try to repel the figures.

“Come on, you all!” shouted the unicorn commander to Twilight and her friends “We have orders to evacuate this whole town and escort you to safety for now! You don’t wanna be left behind, do ya?”

They all looked at each other, before Twilight replied.

“But... could you just tell us what’s happening here, first?”

“No time! We need to hurry, c’mon!”

“Wait! Our friend, she lives near the edge of the Everfree forest, we need to go get her!”

“Yeah, and what about our families?” Applejack added up to their concern.

“What will be of my dear sister?!” fretted the designer white unicorn.

“We’ll get them, as well as all the other citizens. Don’t worry about that now! Go, go!”

The guards pushed the six friends forward, leading them to the main street, while a few others protected the rearguard and continued shooting at the shadowy forms.

At some point, they noticed other groups of soldiers coming out of the houses, followed by terrified and confused ponies, who had also been instructed to follow them to a provisory shelter.

Flanked by two guards, Twilight found herself swollen in yet more concern and questions than before, especially after seeing Berry Punch mutilated and disfigured like that... who could do such a terrible thing? Her maimed face and her shattering screams of pain were all still very vivid in her mind, and it made her shudder the simple thought of being more tortured ponies like her out there.

Suddenly, almost like a fear had materialised itself directly from Twilight’s mind, one pony threw himself out of a window a scarce meters ahead of them, landing right in front the commander, who was put to a complete halt by the unexpected alarm.

It was a male pony, with a brownish coat and a darker brown mane and tail, both awfully dirty and unkempt. He had bruises all over his body, and a large open cut on the side of his ribcage, from which blood streamed profusely and formed a small pool underneath his stiff, deadened form.

As the commander approached to inspect him, he got up on his front legs in a split second and started crawling, dragging his insensitive hind legs behind. He too had both his eyes cut off and his entire jaw had been ripped out, leaving thick curdles of blood hanging down and dripping from where his tongue should be. He crawled to them very swiftly, while shrieking through painful breaths, constant sobbing and reverberated wheezes.

“AFRAID... SO AFRAID... SHE’S HERE!”

He launched himself at the shocked and frozen commander, bringing him down, and started punching him enraged in the head, while the latter just screamed in pain and horror. The soldiers hurried to rescue their superior, but the mangled pony jumped at another one of them, who also began to cry in indescribable panic.

Rainbow Dash woke up a second time from a terrifying nightmare made of reassembling memories to another exactly identical happening right before her eyes, with the only difference between the two being but a couple of lost minutes.

Applejack was still running through the scorched streets of Ponyville, dodging an occasional lightning strike or trying to avoid the large dark figures that, no matter what turn she took, seemed to always know exactly where and when she would pass by them.

“You okay there, RD?” she shouted, while panting heavily from the effort she had been putting on herself in order to keep running with a semiconscious Rainbow Dash on her back for so many minutes “Try not to fall asleep again, okay?”

The pegasus was still not able to respond clearly; only indistinct mumbles and small groans came out from her mouth. Her eyes were half-closed, but she would not take them away from the devastating scenario happening in every corner.

Frightened, hopeless guards were beginning to retreat with the few citizens still unharmed they had managed to gather, while the others seemed to be suffering from the same bizarre curse and attacked any soldier that tried to get close to them.

Chaos, destruction, fear and death had befallen over Ponyville, ravaging its inhabitants to a point that even the guards doing their best was not enough to protect them all.

A few minutes later, Applejack finally stopped, having a bit of difficulty in trying to catch her breath. She had managed to get out of the town completely, and she found herself standing on a long road that led to the edge of the Everfree forest, far ahead. Twilight, Spike, Pinkie and Rarity, along with the three scared little faces of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, were there waiting for them there. All of them had bruises and small cuts as well, like they had been on a struggle, and Pinkie even had one large bite mark on her front leg.

“Look! There they are!” the young dragon exclaimed.

As soon as they all became aware of Applejack’s arrival, they ran in her direction, sighing in immense relief to see that she had found Rainbow Dash and that both of them had made it out of Ponyville alive.

Twilight lifted the rainbow-haired pegasus from Applejack’s back with her magic grapple and laid her body cautiously on the grass. Once laid down, she made another effort to talk, with her mouth still feeling numb and her head aching a little.

“Rainbow! Are you alright? Can you talk?”

“I... I think I’m fine now... what happened to me?”

“You were struck by a lightning bolt! It’s a miracle that you’re still alive!”

“Yeah, and then you’ve lost control and did some oopsie-loopsies while freefalling, zzzuuuuuu!, pchiu!, and then you crashed on a rooftop and rolled down from it, and bum!, you landed on the floor!” the pink pony gabbed in her typical squealing and hyperactive voice, though showing some seriousness and concern in her tone.

“Thank goodness Applejack got you before one of those things did, darling!” Rarity added up.

Applejack was still desperate to catch her breath after such a rough ride, when she noticed that, aside from her little sister, neither her brother nor her granny were there, among them.

“Pinkie, have you... seen mah brother... or mah granny?”

The pink pony perked down her ears and bore a lamenting expression on her face.

“I’m so sorry, Applejack, I couldn’t find Granny Smith anywhere in the house or the barn. As for your brother, I’ve... actually found him, but he was already like the others... he kept all his teeth intact, though. In fact, it was him who did this to me!” She pointed down to her bite mark.

The farmer pony understood. She had already prepared herself mentally for something like that to happen, so she did not shed a single tear.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash made an attempt to get up on her hooves but, as soon as she put some weight on them, her front legs started shaking and she ultimately dropped heavily to the ground, cursing and groaning.

Applejack had just regained her full stamina, so she approached the hurt Pegasus and promptly lent her a hoof to help her get up. She then passed her front leg above her own shoulder, in order to aid her move around.

“C’mon, partner. We still have to get Flutters, before we leave this cursed place for good.”

That settled, the six of them proceeded to follow the road, leading to their bashful friend’s cottage.

During their paced march, another sudden flashback assaulted Rainbow Dash’s mind.

After the unpredicted attack of the tortured pony to the platoon of unicorns that was escorting them, the situation got absolutely out of control. The fearsome shadowy forms began appearing from every direction, surrounding them completely, and Twilight and her friends found themselves forced to run away as fast as they could, leaving the soldiers behind to their doom.

As soon as they lost sight of all of them, they stopped for a brief moment to catch up their breath and to make up their own plan of escape. The purple unicorn spoke first.

“Alright, it’s obvious that we’re not safe in Ponyville anymore, so we need to gather up with Fluttershy and our families as soon as possible, and head to the Canterlot castle. It should be safer there, with the princesses, and I seriously want to personally ask princess Celestia what in Equestria is going on.”

“Sweetie Belle had invited Applebloom and Scootaloo to a sleepover, so they’re still in the boutique” Rarity informed.

“Oh, this is horrible!” Pinkie whimpered, with tears beginning to form at the edges of her blue eyes “Poor Berry Punch... poor Time Turner... who could be so mean to do something like that to them? And who is ‘she’ they were all talking about?”

Rarity placed a heartfelt hoof on her pink friend’s shoulder, trying to calm her down as she started crying and sobbing.

“I have no idea, Pinkie...” Twilight responded in a low, sincere tone, as she shared the same lament and apprehension “but I know that we can’t stay here any longer, or we’ll risk that this terrible curse will get to us, as well.”

They understood she was right, so they listened carefully as she began to set up a plan to leave Ponyville on their own, now that they were separated from the escort.

“So everypony understood? After we get to Sugarcube Corner, we’ll split in two different directions: me, Spike and Rarity will take the left street, where we’ll pass by Carouselle Boutique and get the girls. While that, Applejack will go with Pinkie and Rainbow down the right road, which leads to Sweet Apple Acres, and you’ll gather up with the rest of your family. Finally, we’ll meet at the northernmost edge of town, and from there we’ll go get Fluttershy.”

With a final agreement, they proceeded to scamper towards Ponyville’s pastry shop, where Pinkie lived and worked. A sudden, horrifying thought came to her mind, as she wondered if the same thing that had happened to Berry Punch and Time Turner could also have happened to the Cake couple, or even worse: their little, innocent babies!

The pink pony shuddered and whimpered silently while running with her friends, but tried to shrug those thoughts off, imagining that none of this had ever happened and remembering how her delicious pastries and the parties she threw to her friends there always made her extremely happy.

As they arrived at the intersection right in front of Sugarcube Corner, they noticed that the doors had been knocked down, indicating that, probably, the guards had already been there, and escorted the Cakes out to the shelter.

“I just hope that they can make it out of here safely...” Pinkie sighed with a bit of unease.

From there, they parted through different ways, like planned, and Applejack took the lead of her group as they went down the right road.

However, they were put to a halt when another lightning strike clashed fiercely with the stone paving in front of them with an ear-splitting sound, and making debris fly in their direction, some actually hitting them and leaving slashes and bruises on their skin.

Another frightening, mysterious silhouette appeared before them, and started walking in their direction. The orange and the pink pony took a deep breath for some courage, before rushing towards it at the same time, splitting in two different ways only a few meters away from actually running into it, with Applejack passing by its right and Pinkie by its left.

The figure did not try to attack neither of them, nor did it stop its slow march, heading now in the direction of Rainbow Dash, who promptly left off and flew above it without a problem.

“Get down here, RD! You might get hit!” Applejack shouted at her when they finally lost sight of the silhouette, while running down the street they were on.

But the pegasus did not listen, for she was too high and distant, so she continued dashing through the skies and the tempest, until what was almost foreseen to happen occurred: because of her imprudence and excessive confidence in her flight skills, the following lightning that lit up the skies of crimson-red, accompanied by a loud thunder that almost shacked the earth, clashed directly with Rainbow Dash’s body and she lost her senses for a brief moment, sufficient for her to lose control and start a freefall.

“DASH!!!” Applejack and Pinkie gasped at the same time, as they saw her friend falling very fast from a great altitude.

Concluded the final segment required for Rainbow Dash to completely remake the moments previous to her temporary amnesia, what happened afterwards followed with the memories of the ponies who witnessed her fall.

“Pinkie, go get mah family and meet up with the others! Tell ‘em Ah’m gonna get Dash!” Applejack ordered, already heading in the direction where the cyan pegasus had fallen.

“I will! Be careful, Applejack!” Pinkie replied, before she too scampered away.

In a few minutes, the pink pony had reached the dirt trail leading to Sweet Apple Acres, now so gloomy and silent she gulped nervously before proceeding up the hill and to the house.

She was all alone there; with all the horrors happening down in Ponyville, all she could hear was the distant and faint commotion, and the red bolts of lightning did not seem to stretch that far. But the murkiness and morbidity all around her, throughout the acres as far as her eyes could see, were still quite distressing, so she hastened her pace, determined to do what she was supposed to there, and then get back to meet the rest of the group, as planned.

Once she reached the porch, she gasped upon seeing Winona lying dead on the floor, her eyes still open, and approached her mysteriously unscathed body to place a hoof gently on her head, still warm, as if she had died not too long ago.

“Goodbye, Winona...” Pinkie whimpered, with tears forming in the edges of her eyes “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be faster.”

Leaving the body, she turned around and tried to open the door, which fortunately was unlocked, so she had no trouble getting in the house, though the interior was absolutely dark and dead silent.

Taking a deep breath for courage and hoping not to come across with anything scary inside, being silhouette or distorted pony, she trespassed the threshold and began searching for a light source, taking her time to adjust her eyes to the darkness in the case she would find none.

“H-hello?” she called in an anxious tone “Big Mac? Granny Smith? Anypony in here?”

Minutes have passed, but nopony would respond, and she had already searched through all of the ground floor. Her hopes of finding anypony unscathed in there were diminishing, but she was still going to carry out her promise to Applejack to find her brother and granny, even if there was a chance that they were already dead, or worse, turned into those possessed ponies scourging the streets of Ponyville.

She then went to look for them in the barn. Upon reaching the tall wooden doors, she cautiously slid one of them open and peeped inside, trying to recognize somepony familiar the best she could in the total darkness there. She called again, but only to meet with no response at all, so she gulp nervously before stepping inside.

Like the house, the barn was utterly pitch black and dead silent, with the only difference being a rather pestilent and tainted scent in the air her nostrils quickly picked up.

Suddenly, her ears perked up and her legs stopped instantaneously as she heard a weak and prolonged growl coming from scarce meters ahead of her. On full alert and trembling in fear, she watched a bulky shadow move across the barn in front of her, while emitting that horrendous grunt, before disappearing and going quiet once more.

Pinkie could feel the cold sweat streaming down her forehead, as her breath got heavier and her heart beat faster. She was definitely not alone in there, but she so terrified at that point she would not dare to even move. The slow roars were intermittent, echoing from every direction, circling her, and each time appearing closer, but it was when they were silenced that the dread was greater.

A strangely longer pause followed, and the pink pony was totally petrified, even her breath had stopped to the suspense; whatever that thing was, it was very close.

And so, hulking through the darkness came a large indistinctive form, its breathing horribly sickened and distorted breathing, limping towards her, to the point where her vision inside the pitch black barn could finally discern who was standing menacingly before her.

“Big Mac?” Pinkie’s voice was almost inaudible.

The red farmer pony jumped abruptly at her, his hefty body immediately knocking hers to the ground, forcing her to land on her back and smack her head on the floor. He wrapped both his front hooves around her thin pink neck and grasped firmly, cutting her air supply, and slowly approaching his head to hers, revealing the horrendous state in which that mysterious plague had left him.

Besides his muscular body covered in the same amount of painful-looking wounds and blood as the others, he had jagged broken ribs protruding from his back, fairly resembling a dragon’s back scales, but the worst part was his head, so awfully deformed it caused Pinkie want to vomit, as his mouth was abnormally widened throughout the entirety of his skull, replacing the nostrils and the eyes, and many sharp, crooked teeth ripped out through his gums.

Pinkie fought desperately with her front hooves, trying to get his teeth away from her face, but only ending up getting bitten on one leg. Before his salivating giant maw got nearer, she finally managed to deliver a fierce kick with one hind hoof in his stomach, stunning him enough time for her to break free from his strong grip and run away towards the farther end of the barn.

The adrenaline was immense, her heart pounded like never before and she was panting heavily. Her eyes welled in tears after being closer to look in the face of her own death than she had ever in her life.

The disfigured Big Mac had chased her until she found herself corralled against the wall and skidded to a stop and turned around to see his massive built, slowly approaching, like a predator hunting his cornered prey. Behind him was the dim ray of light from the crack of the door from where she had entered, and her only way out.

Pinkie actually believed this was her doom for a moment. However, she suddenly realised that underneath her hooves lied a rather hollow and unstable surface; it was a trapdoor, hidden between the straw scattered on the ground. Without thinking twice, she hurried to open it and slip to the cellar in the basement, just before Big Mac leaped at her, but only burying his long teeth on the wooden hatch.

The cellar was equally dark and quiet, but nevertheless Pinkie took a deep breath of relief, thinking she was all alone now. Soon enough, a faint, distinctive noise proved her wrong, though it was not much of an alarming sound this time, more like a waning respiration. A few steps forward and a familiar face became clear in the middle of the total murkiness, one Pinkie was truly glad to see immaculate.

“Granny Smith!” She rushed to the elder pony, who sat unmoving against a wooden support beam, and realised she was awfully pale and about to lose consciousness caused by deep cuts on her wrists, almost dried out, moistening the hay beneath her in a crimson pool, with a small, rusty knife nearby. Pinkie held her head up on one of her hooves “Granny Smith, Applejack sent me to get you, we’re gathering outside and preparing to leave Ponyville, and...”

“No, Pinkie...” She was interrupted by the elder, who still managed to mutter through great effort “Ah’m afraid Ah can’t go with you, dear. This evil that has befallen over us... nothing like it has ever been seen. It’s beyond our understanding. When Ah saw mah Big Mac turn, Ah knew it was just a matter of time before it would come to me too, so Ah prepared mahself...” she pointed to the knife laid beside her, then inhaling deeply as if in her final breath “You must go, dear. Find your friends and leave this place. Princess Celestia... she’s an immortal, she might know of something. But Ah need you to promise me one thing.”

Pinkie could not hide her profoundly sorrowful face while holding somepony she realised was not going to live much longer. Tears rolled down her face and dripped on Granny Smith’s, but she tried to hold back the distressed sobs for a moment and spoke.

“Of course.”

“When you find mah Applejack, don’t tell her you’ve seen me like this. Ah don’t want her to make up an image of how her granny has died, to live with it as her last memory of me...”

With that, she slowly closed her aged, tired, wrinkled eyes for the last time, becoming quiet and inert. Pinkie laid her gently, still washed up in tears, and said goodbye to the elder before leaving the cellar through a basement door she knew of, which led just outside the barn. Once there, she just ran as fast as she could, scampering through the freezing agitated air towards the location where they were supposed to meet, trying to distract herself from the overwhelming misery this day had brought her.

Promises kept, so had Pinkie’s remembrance also come to an end, as the group continued following Twilight’s lead to the farther outskirts of the town.

“There it is, sugarcube!” said the Applejack to Rainbow Dash, whom he was aiding to walk “There’s Flutters’ house, we’ve made it!”

Indeed, they had arrived at the bridge that led to Fluttershy’s cottage, only, when they crossed it, there was something terribly wrong that made them all agape in dread and worry at the sight before them.

The cottage was on fire and utterly destroyed, the once beautiful garden was reduced to ashes, as well as the houses the yellow pegasus made for her animal friends, and all the trees of the edge of the forest nearby were felled and scorched.

The still lively flames and the embers altogether created a dire red aura in this already appealing scenario, contrasting with the darkness that swallowed the town they had left behind moments ago.

“No... no, NO! Fluttershy!” Twilight cried out, refusing the possibility that her innocent, kind friend Fluttershy could be dead.

She called again, followed closely behind by all the others, who were muted and perplexed with the sight before them. It almost seemed like a giant dragon had passed by and blew fire on the whole site.

No matter how many times Twilight would call her friend’s name, she would obtain no response, so she began to feel desperate and heartbroken.

At last, she stopped and gave up, falling to the ground as her legs collapsed from the deep sorrow in her heart. She looked down, with her mane covering her face, as thick tears streamed down her cheeks profusely and she sobbed uncontrollably.

“Fluttershy...” she muttered.

All of a sudden, Pinkie shouted so loud it startled them a bit.

“Over there! I see her!” She pointed towards one of the many burned trees, far away from the house.

Twilight turned her head back up in hope that it was true, and they all immediately spotted Flutteshy on the distance, sitting immobilised on the grass, near a stump.

They rushed to meet her, but only when they got close did they notice just how miserable she looked. Her mane and tail were unkempt and covered in ashes and slight burns, and her face was awfully pale and frozen in a shattered expression, with her mouth agape and her saddened eyes opened wide, with tears formed on the edges, but determined not to fall, for the shock she was feeling was too much and the pain in her heart too intense to even allow herself to cry.

“Fluttershy! I’m so glad that you’re okay!” Twilight ran to hug her, but she remained stiff and unmoving, only letting a few words out of her mouth, quietly and slowly.

“My friends... they didn’t make it...” She began to whimper, as one of the holding tears streamed down her face, at last, followed by many others. She closed her eyes and looked down “They’re all dead!...”

They all understood and shared the same grief as her. Fluttershy loved her critters like she loved any other pony, and if something happened to them, she would be deeply broken-hearted. All of the others approached to hug her as well, for what she needed right now was to know that her best friends were there for the bad moments, trying to lessen the pain for now.

After she finally pulled herself back together and swallowed the remaining tears, Twilight informed her of their plan in a gentle tone.

“Fluttershy, we need to leave Ponyville. I don’t know what curse we are dealing with, but we should go to the Canterlot castle and ask the princesses if they know what’s going on. Okay?”

She simply nodded affirmatively in her own innocent and bashful way.

That settled, the nine ponies and the young dragon set march along the edge of the Everfree forest, heading towards the mountain where the city of Canterlot was built on, and leaving behind a dark, ruined, and deadened Ponyville.